(Text taken from "Site News" on 24th February 2009)

Well, we made it! Talisman Island has now been a part of the Talisman Community for the past 10 years! Three site incarnations and a couple of url and host changes and here we are...

Way back in the mists of time I joined the Talisman Yahoo Group after getting the itch to restart my Talisman habit, and after a short discussion about ideas I had once had for expansions and the like I was encouraged to e-publish one of them. Talisman Island was my idea to bring a bit of swashbuckling to the world of Talisman and after hastily cobbling some cards together and some html to hold them I uploaded the resulting hodge-podge at 12:02am on Wednesday February the 24th 1999!

Over the following months and years I was offered a great many expansions and was only too pleased to add them so that others could easily access them. A generous Yahoo Group member called Fred Clift offered some webspace for the fast growing content and the site underwent its first change using the evil that is "frames". Years passed and the content outgrew the space kindly donated by Fred and I moved to a new host with virtually unlimited space and bandwidth and it became the blue and yellow beast you see now.... and I'm having thoughts about changing the layout again, but that won't be for a while!

Over the last ten years I have become a little more wise in the ways of html-fu and appreciate that taking a little time over an expansion can pay huge dividends. If I was to remake the expansion it would be somewhat different - a little less extreme and certainly more polished! But even though I can pull the expansion apart critically, I still have a soft spot for The Holy Pail and other gems from it.

ANYWAY... to celebrate the fact that the site has dragged its way through the last decade, I thought I would offer up a competition for visitors, based funnily enough on the first outing of the Dungeon expansion, which as it happens is my favourite expansion of all time. It's also a Bob Harris created one!

On the side of the box for The Talisman Dungeon there was a picture of a knight which was not actually featured within the game, unlike those on the Timescape and City boxes which are shown below.

I once made a pitiful attempt at making a character based on the artwork, but fell into the trap of not thinking things through and basing the abilities on the artwork, rather than on the idea behind the artwork. As you can see below some of his abilities are rather bland and a little pointless.

I wanted to throw a challenge out to all of you to come up with a character based on this artwork using the templates for FFG's Revised 4th Edition of Talisman. There will be a prize for the entry which I think is the best overall and all entries will be placed on a page dedicated to the competition.

You can let your imagination run riot, but the resulting character has to make some kind of sense. It may be worth your while making a little backstory which might help to introduce him. Or her!

I've made up a larger version of the Sun Knight image for the competition and you can get hold of the templates for making the character card in the Downloads section of the site.

All you need to do is have a think and make a character for the game and email it to me with any details you would like to add about background or reasoning behind certain aspects of the character and cross your fingers!

The prize for this endeavour will be your choice of either a set of White Knight cards for the 2nd Edition of Talisman or a set of the two promotional cards for the Revised 4th Edition.... and I don't expect to see them on some auction site shortly afterwards! The winner will also get (steady now!) a fabulous Talisman Island Competition Winner's Toad! Which, believe me, sounds a lot more grand than it is!

There is a special bonus should the winner choose the Revised 4th Edition promotional cards! Felicia Cano, the artist responsible for the artwork used on the cards has kindly offered to sign the cards if the winner so wishes! These could end up being very collectible indeed!!

...and the winner is...

Well, the entries have been looked over and I have made a decision on a winner, and the decision was not an easy one, believe me! The 20 entries were great to see and they included some very good attributes and the stories behind some of them were very well thought out.

Unfortunately there can be only one winner and I have decided that the winning entry was one that introduced a novel mechanic using existing cards and was accompanied with a fanciful story based in the land of Talisman!

Charlie Bright's "Knight of Day" can be seen below and you can read the story behind this mysterious character at the end of the gallery, which contains the rest of the entries, using the buttons at the bottom of the page.

Charlie has opted to have the promotional cards for his prize, signed by Felicia Cano along with the tiniest Toad in the land! They will be placed in a bottle and thrown into the sea and should be with him some time before he retires!

I am sure the entrants would appreciate some feedback, so if you want to send some words of encouragement, please do so over in the Anniversary Thread over at the FFG forums.

Special thanks to everyone that entered the competition and to those who sent good wishes for the anniversary! Here's to the next 10 years!!!